These days I announced to Radoje that I'll be gone. Or I did so last fall, but for his ears only. This time they tried to put me to be the secretary of the party organization in RZZS (oh fuck that, every now and then there's some such quasi honor, give me rather what I earned, fuck me off with them fanfare), which I refused because "I took upon myself the task, assigned to me by SSOJ, to take part in founding a small society-owned enterprise, a youth firm, and the project is well on its way and we expect it will be operational this spring - which is consuming so much of my time that I wouldn't be able to dedicate myself to both duties with the care and diligence they both deserve. Additionally, when it starts working, it's expected of me to be working in it, that's how the founders designed it, so I can not take this duty". Which created a flurry of confusion, really nobody knew about that, and here they know who fucked with whom, who got drunk with whom, when and where... Well, well...
And the offers started coming in. First Krste Neškoski from educational inspection came with an offer to head a new section in charge of introducing computers into schools, elementary and high. Thanks nicely, I'm a programmer, and watching how son of a ŽGLJ dumps the contraptions and then share the torment of trying to put those awful and practically unusable little boxes to use... And with whom would I work - the informatics subject was mostly passed to those whose subjects were removed from the curriculum - the lecturers (see school levels) of oto first, but there were others who were even ress related. Thanks nicely.
There was perhaps an offer from stambena, but I just couldn't suffer to see their accountant again. Since mid 1987 I was with them on a "Sure I'm coming right away, as soon as you pay for what you owe me since last time". The guy had a snake in his purse. Always ready to remember me when he needed me, never when he opens the purse. I'm amazed how often I had to remember the quote sentence in the following couple of decades.
The best came via certain Božajić from kombinat's erc. Why did Big Ćale send him, wish I knew. Perhaps because his wife taught physics in MPSŠC, so we met a few times at Granpa Frost for kids, for new years, when we were the only two beards at the table (and their daughter was later roommates with Go). Well, for your mother's cunt (that's to Big Ćale), now you remembered me, while for years you forcedly pretended that I didn't exist. This can only be explained as fear of possible competition. This filling the pants was the best sign to me that we're on the right track. We were something before we even started.
And then, around mid month, the offer from the house. Radoje was picked as the messenger. We sat in his office, coffee on the table, I had a cigarette, perhaps he did too - he did smoke now and then, not regularly though. He recited the offer as passed to him, obviously over the dick and obviously rooting for me, so I told him to cut the story short and just say how much. "Five dinars less than mrs K". Which said it all. "Thanks for the offer, and I don't envy you at all for having to carry the offer... but you already know". "I know, but we have to go through the motions, so we can't say we didn't try".
And the commercial manager had the wisdom to ask of Žića „is it an erc that you have there, or a training center?“. But the guy didn't listen.
Mrs K was the chief of plan and analysis, which is two rooms and a small anteroom, right across the hall from the internal bank, and between the kitchenette and the big meetings hall. Caustic, frequenly malicious, a real little wasp, a blonde but probably the only one I'd never consider a chick. It once happened that the two mugs, the security guy (from VIII2) and the fire safety referent (from IV3), and I were maneuvering a table from her second room into the bank. The rooms were small, the furniture was large, and the maneuvering space was scarce. So the only way to do this was to push three other tables out of the way to have a path whereby this table would get out. One specially heavy and nasty tables gave us most trouble, and we had to push it, inch by inch, from the first room, through the connecting little anteroom, into her room. When the target was achieved, the fire guy and I took a smoke break (the security guy didn't smoke) and then to return the other tables to where they were before.
That's when she appeared. She immediately got it into her head that we're adding a table into her office, that someone's trying to shove yet another person into her office, that her privilege of a room for herself alone is being revoked, that someone thought she doesn't deserve it anymore... She's just below fifty kilos with the bed, and yet her anger alone pushed that heavy table back into the anteroom. Thanks for helping us, and for the memorable scene.
Some time at the beginning of my staž at stour, she saddled me with some speech she was supposed to read at the internal party meeting. My poveznica (the paper which shifts my membership from one party organization to the next, where I worked, along with my dossier and characteristic, i.e. person description, which nobody was allowed to see, specially not me) didn't arrive from the school yet, so I wasn't invited to meetings at the time (but the membership fee was regularly deduced from my salary). So, I'm to be your typist, eh? Okay, can do. I took and retyped it from manuscript, I guess on the Partner because it had Wordstar - there was no editor, that I knew of, capable of wordwrap on the pdp then. I printed that and put it in the drawer. Then I translated all those high-faulting empty partyspeak phrases into what they actually meant in serbian, in simple words. Printed that and gave her. She shit a brick... and then I sent her the previous version, sorry, computer fuckup.
And her husband was some prominent politician, locally. He graduated economics, on our municipality's stipend, even though he lived and finished high school in Trebinje. As Radoje said "we were obviously short on high school graduates who'd study economics, so we had to import them from Herzegovina". Yeah, right, the law was the only thing more massive than economics, there were hundreds of them per year, those managerial faculties never lacked students. But hey, an above sea level elevated pedigree just works.
And, ahem, B. (see 20-I-1973.) had the same surname of K. Another positive points and additional thanks to her for that fuckoff. Who knows who'd I count as kin nowadays.